North and South Korea on Alert Over Loudspeakers Blaring Propaganda

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A senior official from North Korea criticized the South’s use of loudspeakers to blare propaganda messages across the demilitarized zone, but the South Korean defense minister defended the broadcasts.Published OnAug. 21, 2015

SEOUL, South Korea — After a period of calm — or relative calm, at least — along the heavily militarized border between North and South Korea, both sides were back on alert Friday. The unlikely cause: Loudspeakers.

North Korea said Friday morning that its leader, Kim Jong-un, had ordered military units to be ready to attack loudspeakers near the border that the South has used in recent days to blare propaganda messages. Mr. Kim gave the South until 5 p.m. Saturday to stop using the speakers. If not, the North promised “strong military action,” though it did not say when it would act.

Bellicose demands, threats and ultimatums from the North are hardly uncommon, and each side tends to react angrily to any move from the other that it sees as provocative. Frictions sometimes escalate all the way to exchanges of gunfire, only to ease back from the brink again.

Still, the latest spike in tensions came the day after the North directed artillery fire and what may have been a rocket across the border, according to South Korea, prompting a response in kind from the South. It was the first exchange of fire across the border on such a scale in five years.

President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, wearing a camouflage uniform, visited the Third Army Corps south of Seoul on Friday and ordered the military to “respond decisively” to any provocations from the North. Her government said it had no intention of stopping the use of the loudspeakers, which North Korea has said defile the “dignity of its supreme leadership” by spreading anti-Kim propaganda.

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President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, second from right, visited an army unit Friday in Yongin. The South uses loudspeakers to blare propaganda.CreditGetty Images AsiaPac, via South Korean Presidential Blue H

The South’s defense minister, Han Min-koo, called the situation grave, but he urged South Koreans to “go on with the daily life,” and the public appeared to be doing so. South Korean managers who commute to a joint industrial park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong had no trouble crossing the border as usual on Friday.

South Korean defense officials said that while they believed the North’s front-line forces were on a “semi-war” state of alert, fully armed and standing by in forward bunkers and gun positions, no signs had been detected of reinforcements moving up to the border or other preparations for a possible attack.

Analysts said the crisis atmosphere reflected high-level anxiety in North Korea. “The North is desperate to stop loudspeaker broadcasts because they can undermine the morale of front-line North Korean troops and its military’s psychological preparedness,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute in Seoul. He said he thought military action was “highly possible” if the loudspeakers are not silenced.

North Korea’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, An Myong-hun, called the South Korean broadcasts “psychological warfare” and “in essence an open act of war.”

The North’s anger was evident in a letter that Kim Yang-gon, a top North Korean negotiator, sent to the South’s presidential Blue House on Thursday, condemning their use as tantamount to a “declaration of war.” But he also offered to “open a way out” to de-escalate the tensions and “improve ties.”

South Korean officials said the letter fit the North’s pattern of periodically ratcheting up tensions in the hope of extorting political and economic concessions from the South, while rallying their own people with war cries.

“Given their past negotiating style and tactics, the likelihood that they will follow through with their threat of a military action is likely to be low if South Korea does not meet their demand,” J. James Kim, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said in an email. He said it was especially unlikely that the North would attack now, when large numbers of American and South Korean troops are taking part in joint training exercises and ready to react swiftly.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed deep concern about the situation on Friday. “We urge related parties to stay calm and use restraint, properly resolve the situation through contacts and dialogues, and stop any actions that could escalate the situation,” said Hua Chunying, a ministry spokeswoman in Beijing.

South Korean officials said on Friday that the North’s gunners did not appear to have aimed to hit the loudspeakers in the exchange on Thursday; rather, the fire appeared intended as a warning to stop using them.

The loudspeakers bombard North Korean soldiers at the Demilitarized Zone (as well as nearby villages) with a steady stream of sound, including South Korean pop music and news reports that ordinary people in the North would not otherwise hear. The tactic dates from the Cold War, when both sides deployed them to try to shake enemy morale and entice soldiers to defect.

The speakers were shut down in 2004, when tensions on the peninsula were easing, and the South did not use them again until Aug. 10. Six days earlier, two South Korean soldiers were maimed by land mines near their guard post in the Demilitarized Zone; the South accused the North of planting the mines, which it denied.

Propaganda tactics like the loudspeakers may seem more threatening to North Korea’s totalitarian government now than they once were because it has become increasingly difficult to keep North Koreans isolated from outside news and ideas. Recordings of South Korean movies and TV soap operas that find their way in through the black market from China have become popular in the North, where radio and TV sets are preset to receive only government broadcasts.

Dan Levin contributed reporting from Beijing, and Somini Sengupta from the United Nations.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Propaganda War Between Koreas Threatens to Boil Over . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe